The Adam Smith Institute has quite a busy blog, here’s some highlights from the last couple of weeks.
George Osborne, shadow chancellor, comes out in favour of relaxing planning restriction on new housebuilding. I’m sure whatever he has in mind is fiddling at the edges of a very deep sickness that afflicts Britain – resistance to building, but it’s a U-turn of sorts and to be welcomed.
Taxes in Britain have a cost of more than 50% of the economy, when deadweight losses are taken into account.
Hospital Building – a suggestion that there has been too much emphasis in the NHS on PFI-funded building projects, at the expense of service delivery. A call for paying private providers for end-products, not buildings.
Crime: surveys of crime indicate that Britain has 60% more violent crime than the USA or Canada. Most of this is unreported – due to perceived ineffectiveness of police?
European women make substantially less progress to high business positions than Americans, despite – or because of – measures intended to benefit them.